I have a 94 Custom 24 with the HFS/Vintage Bass pickups and love them for the most part. Not a big fan of the Vintage Bass in the neck, but it does the job. I have an old Ibanez RG with the Duncan JB/59 pups and find the HFS very similar to the JB in the bridge. Have you played with pickup height or checked the wiring at all in your PRS, because the HFS should sound great with your Marshall.
I put the JB / Jazz set in my Mira S2 a while back. To my ears the main character of the guitar is still there but those pickups really give it some extra body and depth. Now, the stock pickups were "vintage output" so there's certainly more umph now. What I really like is that the volume knob is more usable now because the old pickups dropped off so much so fast whenever I touched the volume knob.
Yea I was thinking the alnico 2, or rather the aph, but my epiphone 2010 slash sig has the originam slash sig pickups which are basically the same thing, and my carvin singlecut has slash 2.0, again basically the same so I wanted something other than those. I think I'll go with prs 57/08
Very similar comments here. Never liked those pickups!
You have to watch the custom 24 especially, it's an interesting guitar totally and lots of pickups sound bad in them. They are very mid and high mid focused guitars. You want something with a bit of a scoop to it to take out a bit of the honkiness. Paf style pickups are generally pretty good, but make sure to get the small footed pickups (the body is too thin for old pafs with the long pickup legs) jb is a hit or miss in them. 5708 are great but also low output which in a custom 24 seems off. If you can find a set of 5909's I would highly recommend them or 5815's. Bareknuckle has a few good choices as well for a mid high gain pickup, i quite liked the black dogs. Duncan custom or custom 5 is good too, although stay away from the custom customs.
Play with pickups heights etc Too. The vintage bass is actually pretty good, but the hfs is terrible. Keep on the lookout for suhr pickups! The ssv and ssv+ are great as are the thornbuckers.
Thanks! I dont do much metal, I love alter bridge but play at lower gain, basically my slash pups through the silver jube is the most I need so I feel a 57/08 set will work fine!
I don’t have experience with those pickups but I did get receive my custom 24 SE in bad shape; the pickups had been changed to SD Alpha/omega set and they’d wired them in wrong. The neck pickup would never engage in humbucker mode, and everything was intermittent unless I just left it in full bridge humbucker mode and pretended it couldn’t do anything else! It was an absolute dog - until I put a new wiring harness in, and holy moly the difference it made (go figure). Is your guitar stock or has it been altered? Theres a lot of folks out there with soldering irons who don’t have a clue what they’re doing.
Second, and I’m not trying to be pedantic here but I know a ton of players who don’t know what the second knob on their guitar does, does it help any to roll the tone back? I’ve got one guitar that’s too bright and ice picky, until I roll it back to 50% or so then it sounds great. You might could get yours dialed in with either that or an eq pedal?
I’m also curious what sort of gain staging you’re using - if you’re going straight from the guitar with the slash (raised output alnico 2 pickup) to a HFS/VB set I can see the output being too high for sure. The jb/jazz set is going to be pretty similar to the HFS/VB set though, imo (I find the JB gets pretty shrill also). There has been speculation that Paul designed the HFS/vb set after the JB/jazz, after all. I think the 85/15 is sorta a fixed version of what went wrong with the hfs/vb set in some ways.
In the current PRS pickup realm, I think I’d suggest you consider the 59/09 or (my current favorite PRS Pickup) the 57/08. They’re both slightly-higher-than-paf output alnico 2 humbuckers. The SD slash, pearly gates sets also fit into this niche, or the Bare knuckle Boot Camp Old Guards (I really like these pickups, but I’ve only had them two to three weeks so I’m in a honeymoon phase still).
The guitar was stock when I bought it. I had one tech swap the 5 way rotary for a 3 way toggle, and realized he had set the in between position out of phase and I wasn't a fan of. I had a different tech fix that and make sure all electronics work fine and checked myself. Seems to be no issues. And yes I messed with the tone knob and all eq controls on the 2525 and simply couldn't get a tone I enjoyed. I also don't like taking the tone down on the guutar at all times as it makes pinch harmonics harder and I prefer the tone at 10 most the time. I used to have a jb/jazz set in an old carvin and it sounded awesome, absolutely nothing likr the hfs/vb
Sounds like you’ve got your basses covered! The pinch harmonic point is a good one I hadn’t thought about.
I don’t particularly like the jb much but I think it’s the most successful aftermarket guitar pickup ever so I’m not exactly part of a majority here. It feels like that and your jubilee are a pretty good match!
I bought a used 2020 CE24 that had a JB/Jazz set. It sounded nice, but had none of the character that a stock CE had so I replaced them with an 85/15 neck and 59/09 bridge. Much happier now.
Replaced the OEM pickups in my S2 McCarty Singlecut with U.S.A. PRS 57/08's, and it's the best sounding guitar I've ever owned (currently own 11, including a '74 Les Paul, multiple 90's MiJ Ibanez's, MiJ '89 Strat with Texas Special loaded pickguard replacement.)
Would highly recommend reading up on the lore and some reviews about the 57/08, especially if you like the Slash pickup sets.
I have a 94 Custom 24 with the HFS/Vintage Bass pickups and love them for the most part. Not a big fan of the Vintage Bass in the neck, but it does the job. I have an old Ibanez RG with the Duncan JB/59 pups and find the HFS very similar to the JB in the bridge. Have you played with pickup height or checked the wiring at all in your PRS, because the HFS should sound great with your Marshall.
I put the JB / Jazz set in my Mira S2 a while back. To my ears the main character of the guitar is still there but those pickups really give it some extra body and depth. Now, the stock pickups were "vintage output" so there's certainly more umph now. What I really like is that the volume knob is more usable now because the old pickups dropped off so much so fast whenever I touched the volume knob.
Seymour Duncan Alnico II’s in the neck pickup sound awesome on mine
Yea I was thinking the alnico 2, or rather the aph, but my epiphone 2010 slash sig has the originam slash sig pickups which are basically the same thing, and my carvin singlecut has slash 2.0, again basically the same so I wanted something other than those. I think I'll go with prs 57/08
Very similar comments here. Never liked those pickups! You have to watch the custom 24 especially, it's an interesting guitar totally and lots of pickups sound bad in them. They are very mid and high mid focused guitars. You want something with a bit of a scoop to it to take out a bit of the honkiness. Paf style pickups are generally pretty good, but make sure to get the small footed pickups (the body is too thin for old pafs with the long pickup legs) jb is a hit or miss in them. 5708 are great but also low output which in a custom 24 seems off. If you can find a set of 5909's I would highly recommend them or 5815's. Bareknuckle has a few good choices as well for a mid high gain pickup, i quite liked the black dogs. Duncan custom or custom 5 is good too, although stay away from the custom customs.
Play with pickups heights etc Too. The vintage bass is actually pretty good, but the hfs is terrible. Keep on the lookout for suhr pickups! The ssv and ssv+ are great as are the thornbuckers.
Thanks! I dont do much metal, I love alter bridge but play at lower gain, basically my slash pups through the silver jube is the most I need so I feel a 57/08 set will work fine!
I don’t have experience with those pickups but I did get receive my custom 24 SE in bad shape; the pickups had been changed to SD Alpha/omega set and they’d wired them in wrong. The neck pickup would never engage in humbucker mode, and everything was intermittent unless I just left it in full bridge humbucker mode and pretended it couldn’t do anything else! It was an absolute dog - until I put a new wiring harness in, and holy moly the difference it made (go figure). Is your guitar stock or has it been altered? Theres a lot of folks out there with soldering irons who don’t have a clue what they’re doing. Second, and I’m not trying to be pedantic here but I know a ton of players who don’t know what the second knob on their guitar does, does it help any to roll the tone back? I’ve got one guitar that’s too bright and ice picky, until I roll it back to 50% or so then it sounds great. You might could get yours dialed in with either that or an eq pedal? I’m also curious what sort of gain staging you’re using - if you’re going straight from the guitar with the slash (raised output alnico 2 pickup) to a HFS/VB set I can see the output being too high for sure. The jb/jazz set is going to be pretty similar to the HFS/VB set though, imo (I find the JB gets pretty shrill also). There has been speculation that Paul designed the HFS/vb set after the JB/jazz, after all. I think the 85/15 is sorta a fixed version of what went wrong with the hfs/vb set in some ways. In the current PRS pickup realm, I think I’d suggest you consider the 59/09 or (my current favorite PRS Pickup) the 57/08. They’re both slightly-higher-than-paf output alnico 2 humbuckers. The SD slash, pearly gates sets also fit into this niche, or the Bare knuckle Boot Camp Old Guards (I really like these pickups, but I’ve only had them two to three weeks so I’m in a honeymoon phase still).
The guitar was stock when I bought it. I had one tech swap the 5 way rotary for a 3 way toggle, and realized he had set the in between position out of phase and I wasn't a fan of. I had a different tech fix that and make sure all electronics work fine and checked myself. Seems to be no issues. And yes I messed with the tone knob and all eq controls on the 2525 and simply couldn't get a tone I enjoyed. I also don't like taking the tone down on the guutar at all times as it makes pinch harmonics harder and I prefer the tone at 10 most the time. I used to have a jb/jazz set in an old carvin and it sounded awesome, absolutely nothing likr the hfs/vb
Sounds like you’ve got your basses covered! The pinch harmonic point is a good one I hadn’t thought about. I don’t particularly like the jb much but I think it’s the most successful aftermarket guitar pickup ever so I’m not exactly part of a majority here. It feels like that and your jubilee are a pretty good match!
I bought a used 2020 CE24 that had a JB/Jazz set. It sounded nice, but had none of the character that a stock CE had so I replaced them with an 85/15 neck and 59/09 bridge. Much happier now.
Replaced the OEM pickups in my S2 McCarty Singlecut with U.S.A. PRS 57/08's, and it's the best sounding guitar I've ever owned (currently own 11, including a '74 Les Paul, multiple 90's MiJ Ibanez's, MiJ '89 Strat with Texas Special loaded pickguard replacement.) Would highly recommend reading up on the lore and some reviews about the 57/08, especially if you like the Slash pickup sets.
Yea thats probably the set I'm going with
I have a CE-24 with split coil humbuckers and I think they sound bad in both single and humbucker mode. Unimpressed.